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Tuesday, June 19, 2012

The past hurts worse when it will return

It is common to say that time heals all wounds. And generally, it does. Painful episodes from your life become less
painful over time. It is just harder to
remember the degree of discomfort you felt in the past either from a physical
injury or from an emotionally difficult time.

There is good reason for pain to fade over time. Even though an event may have been painful,
it does not make sense for us to relive that pain again repeatedly in the
future. Pain tends to focus your
attention on the painful item, and it wouldn’t be healthy to be totally focused
on that past pain.

A study by Jeff Galak and Tom Meyvis in the February, 2011
issue of the Journal of Experimental
Psychology: General suggests that it is useful to remember the pain of a
past event when that even may occur again in the future. They suggest that when people are bracing
themselves for a new situation, they may remember the pain of a past event as
more severe.

In two preliminary studies they had participants either
listen to an annoying noise or perform a really boring task. After a break, they had people rate how
irritating it was to experience the noise or do the task. Some people thought that the noise or task
was done, while others thought that they would have to experience it again
later in the session. Those people who
thought the task was over rated the experience as less unpleasant than those
who thought they would be experiencing it again.

It is not just laboratory tasks that work this way. In a field study, the experimenters asked
women to rate the amount of pain they experience when menstruating. They found that women who had just finished
their period rated their pain as higher than those who were in the middle of
their cycle. So, the remembered pain
goes down over time. But, those women
who were just about to have their next period rated their menstrual pain as
higher than those women in the middle of their cycle. That is, as they braced themselves for their
next period, women recalled higher levels of pain.

What makes this happen?

The authors of this study suggest that people are actively
bracing themselves for the pain of a new situation. To demonstrate that this process requires
effort, participants did a boring task.
As before, some thought that the task was done, while others thought
they would have to do more of it. After
doing the initial boring task, participants saw pairs of faces and had to judge
which was more attractive. In the easy
task, the faces differed quite a bit in attractiveness. In the hard task, the face pairs were all
quite close in attractiveness, so people had to put a lot of effort into their
judgments. The idea here was that making
hard judgments might make it difficult for people to brace themselves for the
continuation of the boring task later.

In this study, people who did the easy rating task showed
the same results as before. They
remembered the boring task as more unpleasant when they thought they were going
to have to do it again than if they thought it was over. Those who did the hard task, though, did not
show this difference. In this case, both
those people who thought they would be doing the boring task again and those
who thought it was over remembered it as equally unpleasant (and about as
unpleasant as those in the easy judgment condition who thought the task was
over).

So it seems to take some mental effort to brace yourself for
the future.

What does this mean for you?

We often use emotions to help us make decisions. We tend to approach situations that feel
pleasant for us and to avoid situations that feel unpleasant. It is certainly useful for us to minimize the
remembered pain of the past when those events are over. But, it is quite helpful that we can remember
the pain more accurately when that pain can provide information to assist in an
upcoming decision. So, these results
suggest that the cognitive system is sensibly designed to provide you with
information about past pain primarily when it will be useful for you to have
it.